CAIN AND ABEL: BROTHER'S KEEPER OR KILLER

JESUS CHRIST wants to take you with your background and any bitterness it might have produced and turn it into blessings.

He takes us with our differences and diversity and works to produce through us that which gives gladness to us and glory to God. This is a clear cut, classic example of diversity found in Genesis 4. It is the story of the first two persons given natural birth on planet earth.

Science has overlooked the fourth chapter of Genesis and thus is misreading our history of origins. Homo Sapiens did not start off as cave-men and evolve upward. We did not begin on a low anthropoid or simian state as is commonly assumed. Our human ancestors were on a very high physical and intellectual level. Sin resulted in degradation. Instead of evolution there was devolution, the down-grading of man intellectually and physically.

Eve conceived from Adam but knew the child was ''from the Lord.'' ''From'' means ''with the help of.'' Thus, the sanctity of life is staked out in the first conception in the Bible. She knew this child was a token of God's faithfulness for He had promised a ''seed of woman'' would deliver her and all who trusted in Him.

In Genesis 3: 15 God declared that two seed would emerge and be in conflict until the ''seed of the serpent'' was ultimately overcome by the ''Seed of woman.'' In Genesis 4 these two distinctly different seeds emerge as prototypes of humankind.

I. THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO SONS

A. CAIN, the name means ''acquisition.'' His birth brought such joy to Eve that she exclaimed ''I have gotten a man from the Lord (4:1). It just may be that in her naivety she thought this was to be her Redeemer.

The seed, Cain, grew an immediate root of bitterness. Out of a root comes a shoot which produces fruit. Everything in his life evidenced the true root of bitterness. This bitterness produced:

1) Anger (4: 5, 6).

Perhaps he resented his parents ...

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